Jungu, the Baiga Princess Read online

  The professor smiled at Sunil. ‘You are right, Sunil, we must protect the tigers. But we don’t have to kill people to do that, do we?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ agreed Sunil.

  ‘Well, driving Baigas out of their forests will surely wipe them out. I know, I have seen it happen so oft en before.’

  Sunil was nonplussed. ‘But why should they die if they move out of the forests?’ he asked reasonably. ‘Uncle Vish would give them jobs, my daddy would – I will ask him.’

  The old man shook his white head sadly. ‘It doesn’t work like that. People find it very difficult, almost impossible, to adjust to alien environments. Your Uncle Vish is from the Malabar, isn’t he? Have you ever visited him there?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sir, once. Stayed with his mother for a week. Great fun, Sir, everything was so exciting, the trees, the backwaters, gosh, I wish…’

  ‘Could you live there, Sunil?’ asked Professor Lambert seriously. ‘Now, tell me truthfully, would you leave Delhi and go and live in the Malabar forever, could you?’

  His companion was so, so earnest that Sunil was jolted out of his daydream. He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said slowly. ‘The food there didn’t agree with me, Sir, I fell sick, so I had to come home, but…’

  ‘It’s worse with tribals, Sunil, far worse,’ said the professor interrupting him. ‘Their life in the forests is so different from ours. You will see. They just curl up and die in towns, believe me.’

  They were silent for a bit.

  ‘What should we do then?’ asked Sunil tentatively.

  The professor looked at Sunil with great seriousness. ‘No one really knows, that’s the truth. But we do know something. The forests, the tigers, and all other animals and tribals like the Baigas have lived harmoniously together for several thousand years. The forests need protection and no one can do that better than tribals. The forest is their home, Sunil, their home!’

  ‘Then they would take care of it,’ said Sunil slowly.

  ‘The government is too busy with a million things to grasp that point,’ said the professor. ‘Officers like your Uncle Vish think that to save tigers they must drive the Baigas from their home.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Sunil, ‘Why can’t they all live in the same forest as before?’

  ‘Precisely! You will make a good anthropologist one day, Sunil,’ said Professor Lambert. ‘They can and they must. You see, the Baigas and the tigers and the forests all understand each other and look after each other. But once we start chopping down forests and removing Baigas, there will be no place for tigers to live, or for that matter, any animal. We get what? Mines, slums, erosion, landslides…’ He spread his hands and shrugged.

  Sunil didn’t catch all of it, for the professor spoke fast and low in his soft French accent, but he got enough of it to know that there was unhappiness ahead, maybe not for him directly, but somehow for everybody. He asked questions without daring to call the old professor by name, for it was all very well for Matt the Prof to say it would be okay with him, but Sunil knew how insincere grownups could be when it came to their relationships with boys. One minute they would be your best chum and the next a faraway dictator telling you what to do. Sunil thought hard about the problem facing them. It certainly was a tough one.

  ‘You said there was magic in the jungle,’ Sunil said at long last. ‘Maybe that will help Uncle Vish see that Baigas are needed there.’

  ‘Yes, there is that, of course,’ said Professor Lambert with some conviction. ‘The Baiga magic is all we have between safety and certain destruction!’

  The plane lurched a little, the seatbelt sign came on, and there was a loud indecipherable announcement. The flight attendant was back with coffee and poured out a cup for the professor but Uncle Vish said he wanted to consult him so, with a little apology, Matt the Prof unbuckled himself and went over to the other side of the aisle.

  ‘I have got something special for you,’ said the flight attendant smiling down at Sunil, as the plane gave another lurch. She gave him a bag of sugared tamarind drops. How did she know these were his favourite airplane sweets? Perhaps the magic was already working. He chewed on a few of the sour-sweet drops as he gazed down on the green forests they were flying over and soon he had dozed off , his head cushioned on the pillow she had thoughtfully put beside the window. The flight attendant was flying along outside the window her arms straight out like wings but he couldn’t hear a word she said to him. Her red outfit changed to a little red sari and she had grown small and dark but her eyes shone big and bright. With a sweep of her sickle she plunged towards the earth like a bird and the plane followed bringing Sunil’s heart into his mouth. He needn’t have got startled though, for the flight attendant, now her normal size, was only shaking him awake and buckling him in, for the plane was landing at Raipur.

  He thought there would be dense forests all around in Raipur but it was no such thing – just some rice fields, a few small ponds, and uninteresting houses. There was the usual hustle and bustle at the airport. A deferential young man ushered Uncle Vish, Matt the Prof and Sunil into a special air-conditioned room while haughtily making everyone else jump to it. There was tea and some scrumptious looking cakes laid out inside. Sunil ate a few stuff ed with cream, and suddenly felt disinclined to eat anymore.

  The ride out of town was initially noisy, dusty and unpleasant. Sunil was relegated to the backseat of the SUV along with the luggage and every bump in the road almost brought up the creamy cakes. But he was a strong boy with a generally healthy constitution so his stomach settled down at long last and he was able to take an interest in the country they were travelling through. The farms they passed were not like the ones he had seen in Punjab, but much smaller with no machinery to speak of. Even the cattle looked stunted. But a fresh scented breeze blew through the vehicle and cooled him down. He was also happy that he was not stuck between two adults who were continuing to talk about all sorts of boring stuff . The red-bark trees grew thicker on either side, and Matt the Prof called out to say they were entering sal forests. Soon they were climbing through scented forested hills and though Sunil kept a look out for wild animals, he saw nothing but monkeys, who scarcely bothered to move to the side of the winding road.

  It was night when they drew up outside a dak bungalow, brightly lit in the middle of the dark forest. Everyone was stiff and sore from the long ride and both their shoes and the outside of the Toyota were caked with dust. The khansamah had hot water ready in the bathrooms but no one took very long to wash up for they could smell hot rotis and so they hurried out to the verandah where dinner was being served.

  Over dinner, Uncle Vish, Matt the Prof, the young man they had met in Raipur, one Mr. Dubey – I.P.S., Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge as Sunil had learnt – and a few other officials who were waiting at the dak bungalow, all talked official talk, kindly leaving Sunil to his own thoughts. He was digging into a lovely caramel custard pudding when a jeep swept up and he let out an astonished cry, for he had seen a sky-full of stars glittering down in the valley below!

  ‘The eyes of deer,’ explained a stout man in a Forest Ranger’s uniform. He wiped his big black moustache and smiled condescendingly. ‘They are bedding down in the long grass beside the stream below.’

  The sahibs moved to armchairs set out under the stars, to smoke, drink a nightcap and exchange gossip about ministers. Sunil was politely dismissed to bed. As he got up to leave, Matt the Prof came up to him.

  ‘Keep your eyes and ears open, young man,’ he said. ‘We are lost in our papers and can’t see the wood for the trees, or to put it differently, the Baiga way of life for modern development!’

  Sunil didn’t know what to say to that. So he mumbled ‘Goodnight,’ and made his way to his room, As he lay in bed, he suddenly remembered Miss Dhar’s blue silk coverlet with its golden stars round a silver moon and jumping out of bed brought it out from his bag, an
d spread it over his razai… He wasn’t sure he dreamt of anything, but he felt comforted and knew in his sleep that all would turn out well.

  The Jungly Girl

  The first day out under the tall sal trees by the forest dak bungalow, Sunil spent most of his time at the back talking with the servants and helping when he could. He knew they told the best stories and in any case, Uncle Vish and Matt the Prof were busy with Mr. Dubey who had brought a mountain of files, maps, charts and graphs for them to study. Uncle Vish had vaguely told him not to wander too far out and to take care of himself, after which he had ignored him completely. Matt the Prof pulled a few faces, wiped his brow theatrically and was gone as well. Mr. Dubey ignored him completely and politely, so Sunil did the same.

  Motu the cook was the friendliest. He had beamed at Sunil when he first went round to the back and asked him what he would like for lunch. Rotis, of course, potatoes with a spicy tomato curry, thick tur dal, some fried bhindis on the side, and the inevitable caramel custard pudding the way Motu knew how to make it, and as he had learnt to make it from his father who had learnt it from his, who had been taught by white memsahibs, no less. Sunil had tried to interest him in Amritsari chole, kulchas and methi parathas, but Motu was firm – this was Chhattisgarh, and other kinds of food from elsewhere could have unknown consequences here.

  After a very satisfying lunch to which the sahibs had done little justice except to gulp it down, Motu and Sunil reclined on a charpoy in the shade of the sal trees and heard a little bird, the coppersmith, increase its tempo as the air stilled and the heat of the afternoon went up. It was the ideal time for a siesta and they were both drowsy when Sunil brought up what was uppermost in his mind.

  ‘Motu bhaiya, the Baigas must be very fierce warriors if they’re not afraid to live in the jungle, no?’

  Motu chuckled. ‘What warriors? Just a miserable bunch of poor jungly people who know no better than to eat roots and leaves. And what jungle is there for anyone to be afraid of anymore? You may meet a rabbit, if you are lucky, in the depth of these jungles!’ Motu spat on the ground in emphasis.

  ‘My uncle sahib has come here to turn the tribals out and protect the tigers,’ ventured Sunil.

  Motu spat again. ‘You have to be a very sacred person to see a tiger anymore. No. All gone, all gone. The sarkar wants to say there are plenty around, so all right, there are tigers. The sarkar gets money from Americans to say so and that is all right also – we all have to protect our stomachs. So all right, there are tigers.’

  ‘Then why drive the poor Baigas out?’ persisted Sunil.

  Motu sat up and looked at him round-eyed. ‘Why not? What good are they anyway? Why have such miserable people around, uncultured, running around like animals? Who cares where they go?’ He lay back on the charpoy and tried to close his eyes.

  ‘The professor sahib says they have magic,’ began Sunil.

  Motu turned round on his side to look at him. ‘Yes… so the old ones tell us,’ he said solemnly. ‘You stay away from the Baigas, all right, chota sahib? They are bad people. You don’t want them, and I don’t want them. That old white sahib, why, he can have them and take them all to England. That is the best solution.’ With that he turned his back on Sunil with finality and in a minute or two was snoring, the noise rising and falling rhythmically with his stomach.

  Sunil was no longer sleepy, so getting up softly he went into the large drawing room of the dak bungalow that was mostly kept locked up. Matt the Prof had told him it had some rare old books about the Baigas, tiger hunting and elephant up-keep, and Sunil thought he might as well add to the knowledge imparted by Motu. He selected a small pile of books, and put them carefully on a teapoy, which is what Motu called the small side-table which had black-buck antlers for legs. Th en kicking off his shoes, he lay on a large smelly sofa by the large plate-glass window and started to read. Miss Dhar, more so than the other teachers, had taught him how to select books, how to refer to any particular theme, and how to make sense of different points of view. He had found a funny old dictionary named Hobson-Jobson, which told him the history of the strange words that the British had coined in India long ago, why a guest house was called a dak bungalow, why Motu called rasam ‘mulligatawny soup’. The shades of the old British sahibs still seemed to rule in distant places like the one he sat in. He read on, picking up book after book at random. Sometimes he would close the book he was reading and look out of the window dreamily. His daydreams gave life to what he had read and he understood the writer all the better.

  Motu bustled into the drawing room at four-thirty in the afternoon, as the shadows were lengthening under the sals, carrying with him a most welcome silver tray loaded with thick buttered toast and a large old-fashioned silver teapot, which was taken out ceremoniously only when burra sahibs visited the dak bungalow.

  ‘This silver tea set, chota sahib, is older than me, older than my grandfather, left here by Ranley Memsahib,’ he said, setting it down on a nearby table. ‘Those books will tell you about her. Oh! She was a great lady, afraid of nothing. Tigers, elephants in musht, nothing! I have seen her ghost ride by on moonless nights! Once, her horse dashed past, throwing me into a ditch. Now eat your toast and drink some tea and call me if you want anything else. I have to make chicken for the Ranger sahibs tonight.’

  Sunil really didn’t believe Motu but the room felt cold and dark all of a sudden so he took a plate of toast and a cup of tea and wandered out into the sun. Maybe there really was a Miss Ranley or someone called something like that – he would ask Matt the Prof over dinner. But the books in that long-forgotten library had told him a lot about the Baigas, who would soon be forgotten just like the books about them. They had been great medicine people, curing even the English of dreadful diseases with their secret remedies. They had been brave, single-handedly facing man-eating tigers, armed only with an axe or sickle. They had looked after the forests very well, and though later government servants had criticized their system of slash and burn agriculture, the older conservationists had praised the ‘bewar system’ that fertilized the soil and gave bumper crops. The Baigas had respected the earth as their mother and they knew they were the lords of the land, sprung from an ancient royal race lost in antiquity. Sunil no longer saw the shaved hill slopes around him, with the blue-green line of forest far off , he was in the middle of that ancient land of tall trees, the noisy forest denizens telling their Baiga masters all the news of the jungle. And beside him was a little dark girl in a red sari worn high over her knees. She smiled at him with her big bright eyes and waved to him with her sickle.

  The roar of the jeep struggling up the hill brought him out of his reverie.

  ‘Come, Sunil, come,’ Uncle Vish was shouting, his face relaxed at long last. ‘Come let us drive through the jungle as night falls. If we are lucky we may see some animals.’

  He jumped into the jeep as it came up and Chamanlal Singh, the fat Forest Ranger with the big black moustache, made room for him at the back over the left -side rear wheel and soon they were off bounding over a forest track into the jungle. They drove for three hours over winding grassy tracks, splashing through rivulets and bouncing in and out of gullies but they saw only small herds of spotted deer, which were all over the place, sometimes even coming up to the kitchen to beg for scraps of food. They also came across a troop of langurs casually moving across the road. But there was nothing much wilder than that. Once Chamanlal Singh stopped the jeep and whispered that boars were rooting in the valley to the left but they soon realized that the animals were only the pigs that the Baigas reared in their villages. The only tribal they discerned in the distance was a small dark figure hurrying home with a load of firewood and none but Sunil took any interest in the figure retreating in the dusk.

  Dinner on the verandah served by Motu the cook was almost always the same, with rotis, potatoes in tomato curry, tur dal and thick curds, followed inevitably by caramel custard pudding. But no one
minded, least of all Sunil, who besides being very hungry found Motu’s cooking far superior to any he had in school. The sahibs as usual retired to their armchairs under the stars for a smoke, a drink and a chat. As Sunil was going in through the mesh swing-doors, Matt the Prof came ambling up.

  ‘Vish is being very stubborn,’ he whispered. ‘The government has already taken a decision and nothing can change it unless we can do something. You can help, Sunil! Think what we should do, and let me know tomorrow morning.’ Saying this, the professor ambled back to join the others.

  Sunil lay awake in his bed for quite some time thinking about all that he had read, and what the professor had whispered to him. He knew his Uncle Vish to be a determined man of action, not one he could easily convince to let go of a project. His uncle knew charts and figures better than anyone and every paper put up to government was as familiar to him as the morning newspaper. But Uncle Vish knew nothing about people, Sunil sensed this even at his age, for his Uncle Vish reminded him a bit of a math teacher who had been so lost in his own world that all the boys had been relieved when he left to take up a post in the university. So Sunil knew that it was only by bringing people right up under Uncle Vish’s nose and startling him that Matt the Prof had any chance of getting him to change his mind. With thoughts like this swirling around his head, Sunil had a disturbed night. When he woke up next morning he could remember nothing of all that he had dreamt.

  There was a raucous peacock that kept hanging about outside the kitchen begging people to feed him and Sunil spent the better part of the morning playing with him. Th en Motu called him over to decide what curry he would like for lunch, all the sahibs having gone away as usual. After serious consultation, it was decided a lovely curry of sweet potatoes would be made and Sunil, always a hearty eater, decided he would stay close to the action. Sitting in front of Motu and facing the dark swath of trees that